


all those pages bled white

by agent_orange



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Child Abuse, Clones, Discussion of Abortion, Drabble, Drabble Collection, Drug Addiction, Gen, Marijuana, Origin Story, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Trans Character, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-04 01:38:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1762033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_orange/pseuds/agent_orange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What the fuck happened to us?</p>
            </blockquote>





	all those pages bled white

**i.**

When Alison was nine, her mother told her that she would never be the smartest or most beautiful, to find something else to excel at; those words have been burned into the ribs protecting Alison's heart. She's not a genius, but she is cunning and organized—she has an adaptable master plan (kinesiology instead of drama school, Donnie because he's...dependable, adoption because she won't discard the idea of children to love just because her body has failed her).

Beth tells her she's smart, a wonder for putting up with suburbia and Donnie, and Alison's happy. Maybe the storm's passed.

**ii.**

Aryanna falls hard for her boss—too hard, but before she knows it, the dress patterns she brings to Teresa's office come with kisses and more encouragement than her colleagues get, and then it comes with hours stolen away from Teresa's husband and kids in Aryanna's tiny flat, lazy breakfasts and passionate sex.

She is twenty-three and utterly in love, unbelievably heartbroken when Teresa moves away to start her own line, to save her marriage. Aryanna is so devastated that for months all her designs are harsh and black, frayed shreds of fabric tossed on a dressform.

Heartbreak sells.

**iii.**

Drugs aren't new to Beth; she'd used Adderall in college and on the force to stay ahead of the competition. She wasn't the youngest woman to make detective in the precinct for nothing; no, it takes the aggression Beth's learned how to harness for good use.

But rapes and murders aren't like the thefts and drug busts she's used to works. She loves her work, but it wears on her. She gets an Ambien scrip from her GP, then Xanax for when the night terrors give her panic attacks. _It's nothing_ , she tells Paul. Beth Childs has her shit together.

**iv.**

Her advisor insists that Cosima take time off after undergrad. Burnt-out, Cosima buses and backpacks down to Brazil to WWOOF in a tiny town not far from the capital. She does everything, growing and selling mushrooms, agroforestry and construction on this eco-art therapy complex. Her Portuguese is terrible, but her hands can communicate most of her needs. One of her regulars flirts with Cosima for three weeks before they fuck; she falls a little in love by accident.

It breaks her heart to leave for Cambridge. She loves bio and working in labs, but she'd be happy to stay forever.

**v.**

Unlike her roommate Delphine, Danielle much prefers teaching to research. Yes, the analysis can be plenty satisfying, discovering that she is right and someone else wrong, but she is most at home in her lecture hall. She loves stripping away preconceived ideas about political theory, the international political system—how institutions work. They've attended each others' lectures, only to be more confused at the end.

Her passion for the material (and urging from her department chair, who she's crushing on) is how she ends up helping a colleague who plagiarized cover it up. That is the beginning of the end.

**vi.**

Helena does not miss childhood, but she does miss Sister Vira, the only nun who didn't rap Helena's knuckles for misbehaving and always had a treat for her, some scrap of paper and pencil or a bite of raisin babka. She was such a kind soul, always believing that the other girl in Helena's drawings was real, not imaginary.

Helena brought one with her when she left the convent, repeating Vira's words. She hid it from Tomas, but she gets no privacy, no treats, just punishments when he chooses.

"What do we have here," he demanded, and Helena mumbled _sestra_.

**vii.**

Cutting butter into flour for pastry dough and frosting delicate swirls onto cupcakes always tempers Janika's fatigue of starting at 4 a.m. There's something calming about the precision required for baking. It's a science with room for experimentation but not mistakes.

She heads home at two, fixes herself a _jause_ , packs a bowl and sits down to work on her novel. Janika does nothing when there's a knock on the door, but then she hears, "Katja Obinger, from Interpol."

She knows they don't care about a low-level dealer; something compels her to hide her stuff and open the door.

**viii.**

Her lungs and the IV and medical equipment keep her too grounded to even imagine swimming, but Jennifer's imagination is strong enough that she can ignore them and lose herself in the towering stacks of books Greg brings her. She rereads old favorites and revels in exploring the new; she's going to be fine and she writes and rewrites syllabi for her electives, women in modern literature and Russian classics.

The nausea gets worse and she has to keep her eyes shut to avoid getting sick. Greg reads aloud to her, writes down the notes she dictates.

She'll be fine.

**ix.**

Rent in Berlin is simply too high, and even living with her bandmates doesn't change the fact that Stony Planet is a failing electropunk band. René gets a government engineering job; Katja finds work at a nearby coffeehouse. They're generally too tired for sex, but everything's okay.

Until she comes home one day to find the apartment in dissarray, two-third empty with a note from Réne on the counter, an apology about him being overwhelmed with guilt. Katja gives herself a week to mope, then dyes her hair and resigns herself to the establishment. Interpol needs her hacking skils.

**x.**

Losing control is to be avoided at all costs, and nothing is a better reminder of that than Rachel's first year at Oxford. Months passed in a haze of cheap wine and expensive gin, skipped classes and near-failed exams. Her friends turned into one-night stands, then just a list of former fucks; her flatmates half in love with her or angry.

Leekie threatened the loss of her pseudo-free reign if she didn't shape up. After that, Rachel is almost always composed, but after meeting Sarah, knowing of Helena, wonders if rebellion is hard-wired in their nature.

**xi.**

Sarah never wanted kids. She could barely take care of herself, and being shuffled through foster homes illustrated exactly how someone's best intentions could go horribly wrong—she's a walking example of that herself. The positive pregnancy test makes her cry and shake and steal another one, just to be sure. She wants a drink, a fix.

A week into her mental adoption/abortion battle, it occurs to Sarah that she could get clean, get out. Change her life. Con her way into a decent enough job and start from scratch.

She'll do right by her kid. No matter what.

**xii.**

Tony's always had long hair. Even when he was Toni (tomboy dyke, parents' nightmare) he'd let it loose over his headphones (like _Nevermind_ could stop the dysphoria), frizzy waves spilling onto oversized flannels. Everything else changed, but his hair stayed long; he stopped shaving to pass better.

Felix texts when the bus is passing through one of the Dakotas _if the dyad has your file it's only a matter of time before they find you_. Tony buys a buzzer when he gets off in Seattle; locks himself in the store bathroom and buzzes his hair down to maybe an inch.


End file.
